Honours for Mnaso
created: Transcription (Reynolds).
source date: Perhaps first century BCE - first century CE.
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he
availability: Creative Commons licence Attribution UK 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/) All reuse or distribution of this work must contain somewhere a link back to the URL http://inslib.kcl.ac.uk/

Bibliography

[...], A.23, whence [...], 2013.480, [...] 62.1795.11.

Δάματρι καὶ Κόραι Μνασὼ Εὐκλείδα ὑπερδικήσαισαν καὶ ἱερατεύσαισαν Ἀρίσταρχος Θευχρήστω τὰν γ υναῖκα

Translation

To Demeter and Kore: the statue of Mnaso daughter of Eukleidas who has been ?advocate and priestess, his wife; Aristarchos son of Theuchrestos dedicated

Commentary

The personal names of the husband and wife and of their fathers are all attested in Cyrene and the husband was probably identical with a homonym said to be of the first century CE (see C.48) He was certainly a member of the city’s ruling class, just as his wife was a leading figure in the cult of Demeter - that she had been a priestess needs no comment but ὑπερδικήσαισα is an unusual term; the verb also figures in a previously unpublished inscription from the Temple of Demeter at Teucheira T.25. Liddell and Scott, referring to its use in the form ὁπερδικέω, in Boeotia (most recently L. Darmezin, Les affranchisements par consécration en Béotie et dans le monde grec hellénistique, Paris, 1999, 27,11, whence [...] 314287) translate ‘act as advocate for’; could it be that she was charged with pleading the case for initiation of those who had presented themselves for the mysteries? It is possible that she had died before the statue was erected - she had certainly ceased to hold either of the offices with which she is credited.